Historical Junctures

Expand the Possible

Shifts and symmetries, sudden dizzying rotates spyglass into kaleidoscope. Everything glitters in the shift. To the eye, dazzle. To the spirit…

How much has changed since July 21st.

Democracy is at stake in the U.S., more sweepingly than the first time around for Trump’s dreadful clownshow. MAGA is fascist - in its violent imaginings, in its revenge fantasties and glee, in its frenzy for making nightmares a reality. Trump 2.0 has never been inevitable, but the tidings swelled in bleakness of late. Then, abruptly, an extravagant shakeup of the presidential race. Kamala Harris has wings.

Too much has already been lost. Even in the past month, on July 1st, a foundational pillar of the idea of the United States of America crumbled under traitorous legal assault. A radical right wing-controlled Supreme Court, both partisan and corrupt, undermined - fundamentally - the principle that no one is above the law. In The United States of America v. Trump, this SCOTUS in alliance with the defendant broke the plaintiff as named. I can’t think of the country in the same way as before this event. As long as its principles and constitutional ideals held - despite hypocrisy in action throughout its history - America stood for democracy and rule of law. Now, it’s structural integrity is injured beyond repair.

Seemingly. July 1st to July 21st, one tremendous day to another. A fundamental loss - but then, a turn. Perhaps what is lost is not lost forever; there is a possibility the principle can be righted or restored. Already, a constitutional amendment limiting presidential immunity has been introduced in the House; the “No Kings Act” legislation has been introduced in the Senate; and Biden himself proposed what he called a “No One Is Above the Law” amendment in his push for Supreme Court reform, which also includes term limits and an enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme justices (it’s no coincidence that some of the key individuals who drove the ruling that put the office of president above the law also put themselves above the law, repeatedly evading accountability for ethics and conflicts of interest violations every other lawyer and judge in the land are bound to respect). Only a prodigious Harris win - and urgent voter pushback against MAGA elements in Congress and the judiciary - can make such a restoration of principle possible. Against the danger, hope¹: where there was little, suddenly there’s loads - things can change, something already has changed.

“Essentially, these are people who are extremely skilled at recognizing historical junctures, like 2016, where they can come in - and he’s a marketer - and make a difference. They’re very good at recognizing when they can expand the possible, because strong men expand the possible to do things that people thought were unthinkable, such as assaulting the Capitol or getting tens of millions of people to believe, working in an open democracy and open society, that the 2020 election was fraudulent and that he’s still the rightful victor. These are things that are done on a scale, it’s the scale at which authoritarians do things that makes them special. Donald Trump is very similar to those, his present tribe and those of the past.”

- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, authority on authoritarians and author of the book, Strongmen, on the authoritarian personality type.²

The threat is grotesque. Trump, as always, aligns with and learns from authoritarians worldwide, in order to test and expand the possibilities for breaking norms against violation and evil. This is a clownshow, and those might be giant red rubber boots stalking you - you can hear them coming - you can hear them squeaking - but the gun waved haphazardly in your face has real bullets, not just a flag that pops out and says “bang.” It’s buffoonish, sure, but even if they’re incompetent shots, that’s part of it, mayhem is as much the stray bullet lodged in the balcony post as the one that spills brain matter on your entryway’s welcome mat.³

In contrast, hope. & surprises: two months ago, Mexico elected its first woman, first Jewish prime minister by a landslide, a progressive feminist; then in July a leftist coalition held back (at least for the time being) a far-right surge in France; and in the British election, the Labour Party ended fourteen years of Conservative rule with a landslide victory.

Forces for and against liberal democracy around the world continue the age-old struggle; values strife, it’s still on for the earth. If civilization is to survive its multiplying existential threats, dedication to what makes life worth living propels the needed discipline and creative foresight. Forces for enlightened humanism, an inclusive society, and universal individual human rights have to think deeper - and think again.

It’s time again to work on, think on, a global culture for the future. People of the world, ever recurrent in the undercurrents! Such exertions necessarily include - but go beyond, take new angles on - the ongoing cultural critique of what global culture is, interrogation of globalism, geopolitics, hegemony, emancipatory potentials. In readiness for the unforeseen.

My window and a poem on a card slid into the seal gasket, tomorrow's poem. 

Light varies but not by much day-to-day whatever the weather conditions chartreuse of overgrown bamboo. Manya used to have a chartreuse dress. 

Yesterday's dresses
Tomorrow's poems

Peace lily on the sill grew straggly. I planted it in the yard. It's still alive a month later despite the heat. Dirt and smudges from where the pot had been. 

I'm sure about every trace. 

Affirm, creatively: the values necessary for creative life, the conditions for living in full, vindication of a future for surviving and thriving, inextricable desiderata.

It is time, consciously, to build towards an open global culture of the future.

Naming the need: creatively, consciously, to encourage a global culture on humanistic, emancipatory grounds.

Names and naming. Before the judgment of history, especially before the choice of paths to take at a historical juncture, discernment: what will be the right path, what will be on the right side of history? Name the cause. When everything’s sinking, build a causeway.

There’s the side of Good. The naming may be tricky, but the substance is simple. Kierkegaard’s Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing takes a whole book to answer the simple Good. Someone I once knew gave up philosophy for that fact. Your life speaks to what your dedications are: such will cast honor or dishonor on your name. It is fitting to ask ourselves: the name that lasts beyond us, will it be a good name? Will our names be recorded or blotted from the Book of Life?⁴

Reverential to their powers as conduits of truth, there are ways to utilize names and words to keep them in light,⁵ to keep meaning/saying in its self-same light. Moreover, what is confronted in its own light is evadable only through denial, lying - to oneself or others. What then when such confrontation is the choice of a path into the future?

1. Please allow me to recommend Simon Rosenberg’s Substack, Hopium Chronicles, for steady, cool-headed, cool-handed through lines for the Democratic campaign.

2. Daily Blast podcast with Greg Sargent 7/29/2024, “Trump’s Mental State Suddenly Takes a Darker Turn: ‘I’ve Gotten Worse.’”

3. Ricochet. Sickness, fascist friendly fire is its own schadenfreude, ear bandage, that’s already happened badinage, everything comes around again, karma or martydom for a dictator, I mean that’s the joke isn’t it, terrifying bonhomie of the killer clown, belonging can be fatal - at least it’s all in, if you’re in.

4. “A good name is preferable to riches.” (Proverbs 22:1)

The Mishnah elaborates further: “there are three crowns - the crown of Torah, the crown of the priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name surpasses them all.”

5. To keep them in sound is poetry and to keep them sound is thought.